English · Chapter 43
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Science and Technology is a Language Development unit of the Grade 11 Compulsory English textbook. Its theme is the method by which reliable knowledge about the world is produced, and the uses to which that knowledge is put. Science asks questions and tests the answers against evidence; technology applies what has been learned to practical problems; and the unit is interested in both, and in the duties they carry. It trains comprehension on an expository reading about scientific work or a technological change, builds the vocabulary of research and innovation, teaches the language of cause, effect and purpose, and puts both to work in essay and report tasks. NEB questions reward the student who explains the scientific method accurately and weighs a technology's benefits against its costs.
Confirm the exact title and author of this unit's reading text against your own copy of the textbook, because these notes develop the substance the unit's reading treats rather than a particular title.
Science is a method rather than a body of facts. It begins in careful observation of something that does not yet make sense, and moves to a hypothesis, an explanation stated precisely enough that evidence could show it to be wrong. The hypothesis is then tested by experiment, or by systematic observation where conditions cannot be controlled, one factor at a time so that the result can be attributed to it. Evidence decides the matter, not authority or preference, and the finding is published so that others can repeat it, because a result nobody else can reproduce is not yet knowledge. What survives repeated testing is accepted as a theory, which stays open to revision if reliable evidence contradicts it.
Technology applies such knowledge to human purposes, and the unit separates three words students often merge. A discovery finds what was already there but unknown; an invention makes something that did not exist before; and an innovation puts either to work in a form people can use and afford, which is why organised research and development matters as much as the moment of insight.